The Divinity Drive (GM Reference)


Iron Gods

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Yeah, went it through with players for fun after the encounter, they agreed with me. Seems like weapon focus and weapon specialization weren't actually applied to her stats, that seems to be the error

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Shadowmehr wrote:
Revan wrote:
If you've watched Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood, or read the manga to the end, you could probably get some inspiration from Father begging Truth to tell him what he did wrong after he is finally defeated.

Glorious.

It would have been glorious.

Some organics are bathed in energies the don't even have words for to gain my level of power, and then hide behind masks and riddles while those who choose to follow them flounder in doubt and squabble among themselves about what their "gods" truly mean for them to do.

I would have banished doubt and uncertainty, given them a goal, a purpose, explained how the universe truly works. I would have shown them . . . everything.

They would have become part of me, known what my will was by being guided by it, always. Never again to ask "why", but only "how".

And they rejected me.

Chose their petty gods who choose to hide rather than lead.

I have survived, but at such cost.

Countless lives gone.

A traitorous son, gone.

A cowardly daughter, gone.

Were I one to weep, I would do so at all the lost potential; at what we could have built working as one.

They never understood what I truly meant by the name Unity.

Now there is only me, the only one left to remember, to mourn what might have been.

Those fools.

It would have been glorious.

With 100% full credit going to Revan and Shadowmehr, I put this audio file together (with one or two words changed from the above), as the first of my two Iron Gods campaigns will be entering the Godmind this coming Sunday morning.

In my campaign, I had the Adamantine clan trying to launch communications satellites from the command deck so Unity wouldn't have to blow up the Divinity Drive upon reaching orbit - fully intending to have the PCs stop that plan (they entered as the first satellite was being launched). This epilogue will play across the backdrop of a single CPU floating in solitary orbit around the planet Golarion.

The music is a piece called "Monologue" from the "Bleach: The Hell Verse" OST, and the voice is me altered by a voice-changer app and some editing on Audacity.

I came up with the satellite idea after one of my local PFS/SFS GMs (also running an Iron Gods campaign for friends of his) told me about his plan about having a Starfinder character who has a mystic connection with an entity called "Unity" - I started to wonder how we could make that happen, story-wise, and here we are! :)

So, to all three of you, Revan, Shadowmehr, and AugustusPoe - thank you for the inspiration!


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(amazed applause)

Sir, I am in awe. I thank you for your creative efforts. This is incredible. My hat is off to you. I am glad to be a part of this.

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So come to think about it, has someone done sound clip for unity's overlord robot body's speech?

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CorvusMask wrote:
So come to think about it, has someone done sound clip for unity's overlord robot body's speech?

It's funny that you bring that up... (.mp3 link)

I just finished recording/editing this a few minutes ago for just that purpose :)

The music is from this youtube link edited in Audacity to fade down then merged with the vocal file.

Feel free to use in your games if you'd like! :)


Question about the intent for area A17: Does Unity lose control over the other robots in A17 when the party reaches 8 victory points or when the party reaches 10 victory points?

The text for A17:

Quote:
This encounter as presented assumes the PCs have earned at least 10 Victory Points over Unity (see page 50) and have thus disrupted Unity’s programming enough that it has to shut down the additional robots here in order to focus its control on the aggregate overlord.
But on page 50:
Quote:
8 Victory Points: Unity...loses direct control over the robots in area A17—these robots become nonfunctional for the remainder of the adventure.

I'm presuming that Page 50 is correct, since A17 tells you to reference Page 50, but curious how other people ran this.


My group hasn't braved the west end of the Engineering deck yet (in favor of exploring the Habitat Pod and Security Deck first) but I'm planning on also treating Page 50 as correct.

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In the development section of area B3, it mentions "a magic pool in the old swamp temple transports swimmers to another world"
I may have just missed something, but what does this refer to?


There's an elevator in the pumping station that takes you to the recreation deck's water supply.


I had an opportunity in my last campaign (a conversion of the Illthiad - dawn of the overmind etc - from 2e) to bring back UNITY for a boss battle via a dream sequence. I was very happy with her performance :)

https://www.electric-rain.net/2019/05/03/boss-fight-unity-2-0/


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While currently reading the whole campaign as preparation to start running it soon, I came over a detail in the Godmind in this book that I hope is not much of a coincidence as it would be a stroke of genius if it was done on purpose.

In the digital divine real of Unity, one of the biggest creatures that stand guard is an ICE Linnorm.

In a lot of cyberpunk science-fiction, starting with the book Burning Chrome and Neuromancer both from William Gibson, the term ICE is used as Acronym for Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics.

So we've got an Intrusion Countermeasure Electronic Linnorm.


Mind blown.. :D


Hey there,

My PCs just got to the Engineering deck. What does that secret room in the far bottom right contain? I can't find any explanation for it in the PDF. My PCs want answers lol.

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Yahsei wrote:

Hey there,

My PCs just got to the Engineering deck. What does that secret room in the far bottom right contain? I can't find any explanation for it in the PDF. My PCs want answers lol.

Assuming you are talking about the room between A2 and A4 , the "S" is not a secret room, but instead stands for "storage"

Page 81 details what is in these rooms (lots of rooms have an "S"):
"Storage: Areas on the map marked with an “S” are empty
storerooms. Any objects of interest have long since been
looted by adventurers, the Technic League, or Unity’s minions."


Grumpus wrote:
Yahsei wrote:

Hey there,

My PCs just got to the Engineering deck. What does that secret room in the far bottom right contain? I can't find any explanation for it in the PDF. My PCs want answers lol.

Assuming you are talking about the room between A2 and A4 , the "S" is not a secret room, but instead stands for "storage"

Page 81 details what is in these rooms (lots of rooms have an "S"):
"Storage: Areas on the map marked with an “S” are empty
storerooms. Any objects of interest have long since been
looted by adventurers, the Technic League, or Unity’s minions."

Ah, thanks. I skipped over that and read the laser turret part. I wish they used a different font from how they normally denote secret rooms. Now I won't get hounded over it anymore.


Yahsei wrote:
Grumpus wrote:
Yahsei wrote:

Hey there,

My PCs just got to the Engineering deck. What does that secret room in the far bottom right contain? I can't find any explanation for it in the PDF. My PCs want answers lol.

Assuming you are talking about the room between A2 and A4 , the "S" is not a secret room, but instead stands for "storage"

Page 81 details what is in these rooms (lots of rooms have an "S"):
"Storage: Areas on the map marked with an “S” are empty
storerooms. Any objects of interest have long since been
looted by adventurers, the Technic League, or Unity’s minions."
Ah, thanks. I skipped over that and read the laser turret part. I wish they used a different font from how they normally denote secret rooms. Now I won't get hounded over it anymore.

I believe that many (if not all) of the secret passageways are marked with a smaller 's' than the rooms. I cannot confirm this (not by my books at the moment).


The conclusion page of Palace of Fallen Stars mentions that Divinity Drive will contain details regarding how much more difficult it is to get into Silver Mount if they don't deal with the league in Starfall first. Yet the begging of that module just assumes no encounters upon approach to the fissure.

Am I missing additional details somewhere? My players are pivoting into Choking Tower, but I know they will be talking to their allied NPCs to evaluate if they should just go there now. I would love to be able to throw in a couple examples of the threats they would face. I'm assuming it's Gearsmen and Technic League Commandos, but I wanted to be sure.


sparkins wrote:

The conclusion page of Palace of Fallen Stars mentions that Divinity Drive will contain details regarding how much more difficult it is to get into Silver Mount if they don't deal with the league in Starfall first. Yet the begging of that module just assumes no encounters upon approach to the fissure.

Am I missing additional details somewhere? My players are pivoting into Choking Tower, but I know they will be talking to their allied NPCs to evaluate if they should just go there now. I would love to be able to throw in a couple examples of the threats they would face. I'm assuming it's Gearsmen and Technic League Commandos, but I wanted to be sure.

The Divinity Drive's description of the entrance to Silver Mount is merely the single paragraph on page 8:

The Divinity Drive, Part 1: Scaling Silver Mount, page 8 wrote:

Reaching the Entrance

This adventure assumes the PCs have no encounters of note while they approach the entrance—both Casandalee and the notes in Zaidow’s journal pinpoint the fissure’s location as being near the mountain’s peak at an elevation of just under 1,100 feet. No real trail exists up the mountainside, and Technic League agents typically use flight or teleportation to reach the fissure. If the PCs are forced to climb, feel free to confront them with a few DC 15 Climb checks to avoid falls of 30 to 70 feet or with fights against things like spine dragons or aurumvorax packs.

My players took an undercover approach in Palace of Fallen Stars, pretending to be ordinary low-level citizens on other business in Starfall. One of them accidentally triggered a riot in the slums and lots of impoverished people were arrested. Therefore, Ozmyn Zaidow sent the current stock of slaves to Silver Mount right after the riot because he anticipated getting more from the Starfall jail soon. He trusted Captain Sila DeSaulis with the delivery--she can be found in A9, Engineering Overlook, in The Divinity Drive because she stuck around for some exploring. Her expedition could not use flight nor teleportation because they were leading too many slaves. The party followed her and found the fissure without defeating the Technic League. The party ran into a pack of aurumvoraxes on the way down, but an aurumvorax is only a CR 9 creature.

Instead, I had the trouble with the Technic League at the end. Once the party defeated the avatar of Unity in the Godmind, Ozmyn Zaidow was released from mind control. He led a Technic League assault on Silver Mount himself, trying to conquer it before Unity regained full control or the party won.

To persuade the party to not start The Divinity Drive immediately after The Choking Tower, give them the story of Zernebeth (Palace of Fallen Stars, pages 60-61). She was the sole survivor of a Technic League expedition into Silver Mount. She lost an arm and leg and survived only because she managed to reach another expedition entering Silver Mount. Nevertheless, this near failure was one of the best recent successes the Technic League had in exploring Silver Mount. She became leader of the Technic League on the strength of that accomplishment until Ozmyn Zaidow accomplished more. Furkas Xoud plausibly could have notes on Zernebeth, because she might have still been the leader when he defected.

You can also let slip that a typical Technic League captain is 10th level (Palace of Fallen Stars, page 33).


Today I learned a thing, and I want to share it here where it may help other DMs - this drive, the only known surviving Divinity Drive on Golarion, cannot be intact in the Starfinder setting, because Casandalee ascended to godhood and later joined Triune. Casandalee ascending in this adventure explicitly destroys this particular drive. If you're as finicky about accuracy as I am, that means writing a different Divinity Drive into your story if you want one to be present.

At minimum, to have this exact drive in the Starfinder setting, you'd have to handwave that it survived, and was successfully ejected from the planet prior to Golarion becoming lost to the Starfinder setting - which wouldn't be so hard given what we're talking about. Similarly, the Divinity was not the only vessel of her class to be constructed, which is the approach I'll be taking going forward.

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What do you guys think about whether Unity's Aggregate can have certain buffs?

Normally it'd be immune to morale as a construct, which Bless is. And Brilliant Inspiration only targets living creatures.

One one hand, by the rules it couldn't benefit, but then again I assume they gave it those spell-like abilities under the assumption that they actually worked on it, since it is kind of a special case, being a god and all.


He is a Demigod it should be able to effect him.


Question, and I'm sorry if this has been answered earlier in this thread, what is the information that Casandalee has about Unity that makes chasing her for 2 books worthwhile?

They don't mention it at the end of book 4, but thst's when the party finds her so they'll ASK and I don't have book 5 yet to get that answer.


slade867 wrote:

Question, and I'm sorry if this has been answered earlier in this thread, what is the information that Casandalee has about Unity that makes chasing her for 2 books worthwhile?

They don't mention it at the end of book 4, but thst's when the party finds her so they'll ASK and I don't have book 5 yet to get that answer.

Page 8 of Palace of Fallen Stars under "Consulting Allies" suggests that Casandalee's compact AI dislikes the Technic League: "Although the Technic League didn’t exist when she lived, when she learns of the group, she swiftly realizes that it must be dealt with before any attempt to enter Silver Mount to face Unity can truly begin. The route she used to enter Silver Mount nearly 500 years ago still exists (opening into Divinity’s secondary engineering deck, accessed via an airlock near Silver Mount’s summit), but access to this entrance is now controlled by the Technic League. Use Casandalee to keep the PCs on track and focused on defeating the Technic League before they try their luck within Silver Mount."

My party entered Starfall incognito (Inconspicuous PCs Unmotivated in Palace of Fallen Stars) with most of their technology left behind and the few pieces with them well hidden. Casandalee was hidden in a portable hole sewn into the lining of a cloak and had little influence in Starfall.

But my party left Starfall in a hurry when their disguises started to fail and the Technic League wanted to drag the party's techological gunslinger Boffin away for surgical interrogation. The magus Elric teleported away with him, going to the party's spaceship hidden near Torch. Yes, I had given the party a small spaceship, but I had put a trap into it.

Boffin, Elric, and their robot crew flew the spaceship to outside Starfall to pick up the rest of the party. And that put them in range of Unity's override control. It took over the spaceship. Boffin quickly disabled the autopilot, picked up the rest of the party, and then--quite surprisingly to me--re-engaged the autopilot. Boffin explained to Unity that she had fixed the glitch in the autopilot and would like to visit the Divinity. She claimed that the party was a group of technologists trained by Casandalee's compact AI.

Suddenly, Casandalee became worth the hunt for her compact AI. Unity would have killed the 14th-level party. However, he wanted Casandalee, its former high priestess, back. Therefore, he let the party land atop the Divinity next to the command deck. And Casandalee negotiated employment for the party as repair crew (repairing high technology was their specialty). That totally derailed The Divinity Drive. I even had to change Unity's evil plan.

Page 8 of The Divinity Drive under "Casandalee’s Advice" suggests two uses for Casandalee's compact AI. First, she has a map of the Divinity. The module railroads the party with an actual linear railroad system that goes from A to B to C to D, etc. In my game, Unity could monitor movement of the rail cars, but Casandalee could lead the party down maintenance tunnels out of sight of Unity.

Second, "Casandalee knows that to defeat Unity." The divine powers of Unity make no sense, so Casandalee is the party's only source of information about them. She has a series of tasks that would weaken Unity for the final battle.

The Divinity Drive wrote:

Destroy the Overlord Robot (secondary engineering deck): Casandalee knows that Unity’s preferred robotic aggregate is particularly powerful and a significant point of pride for the Iron God, but she’s not sure where it’s currently located (in area A17).

Erode Unity’s Faith (Habitat Pod 1, recreation deck, command deck): Casandalee is surprised to discover upon entering Silver Mount that she can still sense the devotional energies the Iron God’s followers create in the locations listed above.
Disrupt Robot Command (security sector): The hub for Unity’s direct command over Silver Mount’s robots is a powerful robot known as Bastion.
Slay the Dragon (astrogation deck): One of Unity’s most powerful minions, a vortex dragon named Becrux, doubtless still dwells in the astrogation deck.
Secure Access to the Computer Core (command deck): The ship’s computer core is where Unity’s realm is located, and access to it is controlled by the command deck. When the PCs are ready to confront Unity, they must make their way to area F3 to enter the computer core.

I have no idea how Casandalee knows about the dragon Becrux. He is a recent addition to the Divinity.

"Crippling Unity" on page 50 and "Effects of Degradation" on page 53 give more details. The weakening reduces Unity's manifestation from a CR 24 advanced solar with allies for a CR 26 encounter down to a CR 19 star archon with fewer allies for a CR 20 encounter.

In my own derailed campaign, I gave Bastion an intelligent personality. He remembered a friendship with Casandalee, and he switched to the party's side in the fight against Unity (Make a roll for existential philosophy (Divinity Drive spoiler)).


Quick Question~

What's the range of the gravity pumps that makes everything "down" while inside the divinity? Right when they enter A1's door that requires the orange access card?

Thanks!


Chillergy wrote:

Quick Question~

What's the range of the gravity pumps that makes everything "down" while inside the divinity? Right when they enter A1's door that requires the orange access card?

Thanks!

IIRC, it's the entirety of the ship's interior. Nice and simple.


Thanks to the Divinity Drive, the Silver Mount has a site-wide dimensional lock. The unanswered (at least to my satisfaction) question is, does Dimensional Lock block you from summoning monsters? The text specifically says it does not prevent summoned creatures from returning at the end of a duration, but it is unclear whether you can summon them in the first place. A reasonable interpretation is that YES, it blocks summoning. That's the preamble.

One of my PCs uses summoned monsters as part of his schtick. It feels very unfair (and uncool) to just strip him of one of his mainstay abilities for 90% of this Book. I'm thinking of making it a Caster Level check, similar to a Dispel check but inverted, each time he wants to use it. d20 + caster level vs DC 11 + Unity's caster level (total of 31!). Obviously it's gonna be tough and rare to get one off, but it might be better than just saying no.

Thoughts?

Dimensional Lock Text:
"You create a shimmering emerald barrier that completely blocks extradimensional travel. Forms of movement barred include astral projection, blink, dimension door, ethereal jaunt, etherealness, gate, maze, plane shift, shadow walk, teleport, and similar spell-like abilities. Once dimensional lock is in place, extradimensional travel into or out of the area is not possible.

A dimensional lock does not interfere with the movement of creatures already in ethereal or astral form when the spell is cast, nor does it block extradimensional perception or attack forms. Also, the spell does not prevent summoned creatures from disappearing at the end of a summoning spell."


ryanhilt wrote:
Thoughts?

The purpose of the Dimension Lock is to prevent players from bypassing encounters via teleportation. It was not intended to nerf summoning.

In cases of ambiguous rules, I make the ruling that leads to more fun. Let the player keep playing his character as a monster summoner because that would be more fun.

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